1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a stereoscopic display apparatus and a display method.
2. Description of Related Art
As technology advances and develops, people's eagerness for better material life and spiritual life are increasing without a pause. When it comes to the spiritual life, in the world of technology, most people have the desire to realize their imagination and to experience it vividly with the help of various display devices. For this reason, how to develop display devices suitable for displaying three-dimensional images has become the goal to the manufacturers in the field.
In view of the appearance, the technology of three-dimensional display may be roughly categorized into two types. One is glasses-stereoscopic type which requires a viewer to wear specially designed glasses and the other is auto-stereoscopic type which allows the viewer to see directly with naked eyes. The glasses-stereoscopic type three-dimensional display technology has been developed to be mature and widely applied to some special fields such as military simulation or large-scale recreations, but the glasses-stereoscopic type three-dimensional display technology is difficult to be popularized due to its inconvenient and discomfort features. Therefore, the auto-stereoscopic type three-dimensional display technology has gradually developed and become a new trend.
FIG. 1 is a schematic view illustrating a prior art stereoscopic display apparatus. Referring to FIG. 1, the prior art stereoscopic display apparatus 100 includes a liquid crystal display panel 110 and a static micro-retarder 120. The liquid crystal display panel 110 is disposed in front of the static micro-retarder 120 such that light L irradiates on the liquid crystal display panel 110 after passing through the static micro-retarder 120. The liquid crystal display panel 110 includes a plurality of left-eye pixels PL and a plurality of right-eye pixels PR. The left-eye pixels PL merely display a left-eye image and the right-eye pixels PR merely display a right-eye image.
After the light L passing through the static micro-retarder 120, the light L merely projects to left eye OL or right eye OR of viewer. In other words, the static micro-retarder 120 functions as a static parallax barrier. In this way, a left-eye image and a right-eye image of a display image can be seen by left eye OL and right eye OR of viewer, respectively. In brief, three-dimensional image is achieved by the static micro-retarder 120 in the stereoscopic display apparatus 100.
It is noted that, since pixels of the liquid crystal display panel 110 is spatially-divided into left-eye pixels PL and right-eye pixels PR to provide three-dimensional image, the left-eye pixels PL and right-eye pixels PR seen by left eye OL and right eye OR of viewer is half of all the pixels on the liquid crystal display panel 110. Accordingly, resolution of the three-dimensional image seen by viewer is reduced significantly. Furthermore, since optical path of the light L are limited by the static micro-retarder 120, viewer can merely see the three-dimensional image at a predetermined view angle. When viewer watched the stereoscopic display apparatus 100 at another view angle which is different from the predetermined view angle, left eye OL and right eye OR of viewer may see incorrect three-dimension image and cross talk phenomenon of the stereoscopic display apparatus 100 may occur.
In order to enhance resolution of three-dimensional image, a dynamic micro-retarder has been proposed. FIG. 2 is a schematic view illustrating another prior art stereoscopic display apparatus. Referring to FIG. 2, the prior art stereoscopic display apparatus 200 includes a liquid crystal display panel 210, a dynamic micro-retarder 220, and an optical lens array 230. The optical lens array 230 is disposed between the liquid crystal display panel 210 and the dynamic micro-retarder 220. The liquid crystal display panel 210 is disposed in front of the dynamic micro-retarder 220 such that light L irradiates on the liquid crystal display panel 210 after passing through the dynamic micro-retarder 220. The dynamic micro-retarder 220 has a plurality of slits 222, wherein parts of the slits 222 are turned-on and the other parts of the slits 22 are turned-off according to the image displayed by the liquid crystal display panel 210 so as to provide proper three-dimension image.
Specifically, when the pixels 212 of the liquid crystal display 210 display right-eye image during a frame period, the slits 222R are transmissive and the slits 222L are opaque. During this frame period, the light L propagates along a right-eye optical path LR after passing through the dynamic micro-retarder 220, the optical lens array 230, and the pixels 212 such that a right-eye image can be seen by right eye OR of viewer. When the pixels 212 of the liquid crystal display 210 display left-eye image during next frame period, the slits 222R are opaque and the slits 222L are transmissive such that the light L propagates along a left-eye optical path LL and a left-eye image can be seen by left eye OL of viewer.
Since the state of the slits 222 in the dynamic micro-retarder 220 is controlled such that the image displayed by the same pixel 212 can be alternately projected onto right eye OR and left eye OL of viewer along the right-eye optical path LR and the left-eye optical path LL, respectively. In other words, two eyes OR and OL of viewer can see the images displayed by all the pixels 212 of the liquid crystal display 210. Accordingly, the three-dimensional image displayed by the stereoscopic display apparatus 200 has full resolution.
In the stereoscopic display apparatus 200, images displayed by the pixels 212 are updated gradually and the slits 222 extend across multiple rows of pixels 212. When three-dimensional image is display by the stereoscopic display apparatus 200, parts of the slits 222 are simultaneously turned-on at the starting time point of each frame period. Accordingly, the image displayed by the non-updated pixels 212 passes through the slits 222 and projects onto one eye of viewer. The image displayed by the non-updated pixels 212 may result in incorrect three-dimension image and cross talk phenomenon of the stereoscopic display apparatus 200 may still occur.